Freedom from Imprisonment
Freedom from the imprisonment we have experienced in the conventional religious language of Christianity does not mean what we might imagine. Some have sought freedom through scientific analysis and historical-critical deconstruction proving how false the truth-claims of traditional theology (or even Scripture) actually are. Others have taken the tack of deymtholizaion and tried to remove any false narrative or religious image that makes no sense to the contemporary mind. While others offer a form of religious language stripped of any paradox, metaphor or poetic image that challenges reason.
Though these may free us from the religious language of the past, once free, there is nowhere to go and nothing left us that is powerful enough to transform the soul and cause it to transcend itself. Religion itself is left lifeless and flat, and the religious language that is used is laced with platitudes and clichés that sound vaguely spiritual, but are empty and powerless.
It is true, as Tom Cheetham says, “To transform ourselves and our vision of the world, we need forms of perception that are enabled by a language not burdened with the accumulated idolatries and unconscious assumptions of the past,” but what new language is that to be? What is left us?
Thomas Merton, the well-known Trappist monk before he died saw the future path forward and said, “We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love” ( from the Essential Writings, 426).
From my own perspective it is clear, now that this new, radiant language of love must be so alive with prophetic vision and poetic light that it shatters all the old idols of religious language and transmutes them into icons that are transparent to the illuminating light of the transcendence and the celestial archetypes. This is the search and discovery that we are currently making, and the possibilities that are emerging from that search and discovery are powerful and compelling. As Rumi has said,
Though these may free us from the religious language of the past, once free, there is nowhere to go and nothing left us that is powerful enough to transform the soul and cause it to transcend itself. Religion itself is left lifeless and flat, and the religious language that is used is laced with platitudes and clichés that sound vaguely spiritual, but are empty and powerless.
It is true, as Tom Cheetham says, “To transform ourselves and our vision of the world, we need forms of perception that are enabled by a language not burdened with the accumulated idolatries and unconscious assumptions of the past,” but what new language is that to be? What is left us?
Thomas Merton, the well-known Trappist monk before he died saw the future path forward and said, “We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. And this new language of prayer has to come out of something which transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love” ( from the Essential Writings, 426).
From my own perspective it is clear, now that this new, radiant language of love must be so alive with prophetic vision and poetic light that it shatters all the old idols of religious language and transmutes them into icons that are transparent to the illuminating light of the transcendence and the celestial archetypes. This is the search and discovery that we are currently making, and the possibilities that are emerging from that search and discovery are powerful and compelling. As Rumi has said,
It is time to be silent and listen
So that the Giver of Speech may speak.
It is time to be silent and listen
so that we can hear God calling us all secretly in the night.
For in each lover’s heart there is a flute
which plays the melody of longing,
and even if that lover looks a little crazy,
that’s only because most ears are not tuned
to the music by which the lover dances.
posted by Lynn Bauman at 8:30 AM
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